


Nightmares

by ForWantOfWill



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friendship/Love, Hurt Sam Winchester, Lucifer's Cage, Reader-Interactive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 13:50:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1228792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForWantOfWill/pseuds/ForWantOfWill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Winchester, given his soul back after its time in Lucifer's cage. She tries her best to comfort him, and one day, maybe it will be enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightmares

For the first time in what seems like forever, Sam’s there with her, sleep casting his expression into a benevolence and contentment that she previously dared not even hope to see again. But here in this motel room alone with him, the future seems not so impossible. She finds difficulty in taking her eyes off him from across the room; the rise and fall of his chest, the way his hair splays every which way across the pillow, the stubble that strengthens his jaw and the soft flutter of his eye lashes remind her of just how very human he is, how breakable, and how the very presence of him aches in her entirety. She’d missed him.  
Returning to the research sprawled across her desk, she let a faint smile play on her lips. Nothing could repair Sam but himself, nothing could extinguish the literal hell blazing and tearing through his mind, but the fact that he’s here now seems to provide her with the notion that he’s safe. Of course, she knows this is complete bullshit- in the way of the monsters that ravaged the world, her humanity is nothing to stop them- but she will try and help him. Help him to feel human again, however long it takes.   
She stands on her toes to tack a map against the wall above the desk, pinpointing the locations in which recent bodies with absent hearts have been found. “Werewolves,” Dean had said with certainty on his return from the morgue with Sam, acting as an FBI agent being the only activity in which Dean had allowed his little brother to join after his return. Dean demanded that Sam got some rest whilst both him and Cas hunted down those “sons of bitches”, and so Sam slept properly for possibly the first time in weeks. She is glad he has a brother like Dean, and that although Dean often grates Sam’s nerves in both playfulness and seriousness, Dean provides him with the break Sam would never willingly give himself. Dean picked up the shattered pieces of his brother because Sam himself saw no reason to be fixed… But maybe Dean should leave him be. Her chest grows tight. How Sam has managed to completely evade the purposefulness of his existence she will never know: not purposeful because of how many people he’d saved or how many times he’d sacrificed himself or how often he’d saved the world, but because he was Sammy. He was worthy, he was loved and he meant so much to so many people; so much to her. She vowed he would realise this, one day.  
After calling Dean to inform him of further deaths in the area, she sits in the corner chair, folds her legs to herself. As uncomfortable as the wooden chair is, she finds sleep lulling her. Sam is the last thing she sees before her eyes fall shut.

Yelling- sudden and desperate and utterly terrifying- she jerks from sleep to find Sam screaming and gasping, hands clenched bone white in his hair as he rocks back and forth, face distorted in agony, tears streaming, hopelessness etched into his countenance.   
“Sammy-” She almost trips from the speed at which she tries to reach him. Her breath too is heavy, the panic and desperation of Sam infecting her as he buries his face into his hands, his shoulders hunched, and as she embraces him and his shouting fades, he trembles against her body.  
“I’m sorry,” he whimpers into his palms, barely audible.  
“It’s okay,” she whispers, soft and gentle, holding him tighter and kissing his hair. “It’s okay.”  
Sam gradually relaxes into her touch, his arms winding around her waist and holding her closer. There they stay, reveling in the din of their silence.

She combs her fingers through his hair, loosening the sweat matted strands, neither of them willing to speak; she knows that Sam would gladly forget this entire episode, brush it off and ask her to do so too- it wasn’t worth the fuss. Not to him.   
“Sam, I-” she swallows the welling of tears in her throat, prising herself away from his grasp enough to look him in the eyes. So tired, so old, they look back at her. Gently, she wipes away the wet smeared across his cheeks, yet more tears still linger in his eyes and threaten to spill.   
“I can’t even begin to imagine what you’re feeling but-” she wipes the fallen tears from her own cheeks.   
“Then don’t.” Sam’s voice is cold, dead, but his expression so pleading and scared that she has to choke back her sobs, and as she raises a hand to hold his face, he takes it in his own.  
“No, please,” he mutters, voice cracking, “don’t. You don’t have to stick around. It’s not too late for you.”  
“I’m not leaving you here alone, Sam-” and he laughs. Rugged and broken, he laughs until his smile is a grimace.  
“That’s just the problem, though, isn't it?” scoffs Sam, cracking an earnest smile through the tears that tumble to dampen his t-shirt, “I’m not alone. He’s always here, in my head, just-” and he reaches for his head, grasping his hair in a fistful as his face clenches and he lets out a strangled cry and her heart almost splits in two- “just never leaving.”  
In a manner as calmly as her pulsing veins will manage, she prises his hand from his hair, and not taking her eyes off him she kisses the calloused skin of his palm. He is warm and rough beneath her lips, and maybe this is a mistake but she doesn't care-  
She doesn't. She loves him.  
He looks to her, wide eyed and confused, and she smiles.  
“Sammy,” she whispers, stroking his cheek with the pad of her thumb. “I’m sorry, Sam, but I’m not leaving.”  
And she kisses him.  
Tentatively at first, her lips graze Sam’s before he brings her closer, pulling her to sit on his lap as their lips mould between their sighs and his tears. He kisses her deeply, passionately, and as his eyes begin to clear he pulls away. Taking her face in his hands, the admiration swamped in the exhaustion of Sam’s gaze hitches her breath, and whilst her heart is racing and stomach churning, she knows he’s tired. He can’t do this, not now, and so she brushes back his wild hair to press a kiss to his forehead. She loves him, and one day Sam will realise the extent of her love. One day.  
“Go back to sleep,” she whispers against his skin.   
“Stay?” he mutters into her collar bone, hot breath fanning across the bare flesh of her neck.   
“Okay.” 

Curling up beside Sam, buried beneath sheets and clothes and a strange sense of contentment, she rests her head on his shoulder. With her hand on his chest, if she lies still enough she can feel the faint beating of his heart on her palm, the occasional twitching of his fingers against her back as he sleeps. She smiles. Sam is here, here beneath her fingertips, and as long as he’s within reach nothing will harm him. Nothing. She won’t let him get hurt, not after the pain and the torture and the violence, and she will give all she can. It won’t be much, but it will be enough. She will make it enough to keep Sam safe.

**Author's Note:**

> I'M TERRIBLE AT TITLES I'M SORRY. I couldn't find much Sam/reader (kind of) fanfiction out there, so I decided to write this little piece. I kind of really love Sam, and I just want to give him a hug forever so yeah, here's my self indulged writing. Set after Sam's retrieved his soul from Lucifer's cage.


End file.
